All Eyes on Facial Recognition

ECE Professor Vijayakumar Bhagavatula demonstrated facial recognition research at the Optical Society of America's annual meeting in Tucson, AZ last month. Verifying the identity of a user is critical for security applications such as e-commerce, access control, and surveillance, according to Bhagavatula. For example, in an interview with CBS TV, he said this technology could be used in a plane's cockpit to confirm a pilot's identity. If there wasn't a match, the plane would then be programmed to fly on autopilot. The iris, fingerprint, and voice can also be used as biometrics to identify and authenticate a user.